In the late 1970's, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, among others, participated in a number of trials of interactive telecommunications services between subscribers, equipped with special videotext terminals. Each terminal included display apparatus and telecommunications apparatus for permitting the trial of a number of such services where money was charged a subscriber and the desirability and economic advantages of the services studied. One problem facing the continued efficacy of such services was the limited amount of bandwidth allocated to standard voice-grade telecommunications lines. The more popular services that were trialed included, for example, the playing of games. However, because of the bandwidth limitations, the complexities of the games trialed were severely limited and resulted in subscribers becoming dissatisfied with the games offered. Consequently, the trials have been subsequently criticized in the press as technology and not market driven. There has been expressed the concern that the market data realized from those early trials was inaccurate and the trials themselves perceived to be failures.
Perhaps the longest-lived and most successful progeny of those trials have been the so-called bulletin board services. These bulletin board services-have grown in popularity as the personal computer population has grown. However, it is now perceived that these more narrow bandwidth services, such as bulletin board services, are but one of many services that can be offered through larger bandwidth facilities available in the near technical horizon. Coaxial cable bandwidth for cable television services now reaches, if not exceeds, one giga-Hertz or hundreds of 6 mega-Hertz cable television channels. Moreover, with the advent of video and audio compression, data compression and the decreasing expense of memories, the interactive information services boundaries are only limited by the imagination.
Besides interactive gaming and bulletin boards trialed in the 1970's, there were trials of burglar alarm services, home energy management services, travel reservations services, news information services and home shopping services to name but a few of the limited bandwidth services trialed. Certainly, the home shopping services were bandwidth limited to primarily limited text or graphical depictions of items offered. On the other hand, with the advent of home shopping television channels, the advantages of wide bandwidth facilities to demonstrate the products or services offered have been proven. Television has become a highly advantageous delivery system.
In the art of cable television systems, what previously has been characterized as a set top terminal with limited tuner and descrambling capabilities is soon becoming a home communications terminal including user friendly, processor controlled on screen displays for offering such services as advance video cassette recorder programming, sleep timing, parental control, pay-per-view, favorite channels and some limited messaging capabilities.
Moreover, with the advent of so-called impulse pay-per-view services, a cable television subscriber now has the opportunity to presubscribe to future pay events, the charge reporting being accomplished utilizing telephone or cable return lines. Exemplary of the art of telephone return are phone processing systems described by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,003,384, 5,157,716 and 5,270,809, incorporated herein by reference as to any material deemed essential to an understanding of the present invention. Data return technology for a data return channel over the television cable, be it coaxial or optical, are described by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,142,690, 5,155,590, and 5,225,902, likewise incorporated by reference.
Also, on-screen display technology for cable television terminals has progressed significantly over the years since the 1970's. For example, Scientific-Atlanta Inc. of Atlanta, Ga. first designed and implemented a cable television system for hotel or institutional situations having on screen display control features. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,991,011, 4,994,908, 5,053,883 and 5,077,607 and pending application Ser. No. 07/960,261 filed Oct. 13, 1992 describe the downloading of screen command data from a headend to a terminal, the selective choice of audio and overlay of text data on video or plain colored background at a terminal, and real time of day on screen display. In the satellite art, Scientific-Atlanta also pioneered the transmission of a template to subscribers where subscriber supplied data may be entered to complete the template as described by U.S. Pat. No. 4,885,775. Other pending applications of Scientific-Atlanta related to on screen display control include Ser. Nos. 08/072,291 and 08/073,404 filed Jun. 7, 1993 directed to a subscriber terminal permitting reprogramming of display information and attributes thereof from a headend of the described cable television system.
Finally, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,890,321 and 5,247,364 and pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/983,766 filed Dec. 1, 1992, describe various so-called in-band and out-of-band means for transmitting data and commands from a headend to subscriber terminals. For example, by in-band is meant the transmission of data within the video television channel comprising both audio and video carriers. The data may be transmitted as amplitude modulation of the audio carrier, hereinafter in-band audio data, or in the video signal during unused portions thereof such as data channels of an M.P.E.G. compressed video data stream or the vertical or horizontal blanking periods of an analog television signal. Coordination of in-band and out-of-band data is provided at a headend of a cable system by a headend controller ("HEC") described by U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,160.
In fact, the cable television terminal of the future will be programmed and reprogrammed from the headend of the system via external memory modules, plug-in adapted to be received by the terminal or via downloading of software updates over the cable (or fiber) as described by U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 07/983,909 and 07/983,910 filed Dec. 1, 1992.
Despite and perhaps as a result of the need in the art to improve upon these known ways and means for providing interactive services, there has yet to have been realized a coherent solution to the technological problem of providing a single system and method for realizing the majority of interactive services possible with newly available wide bandwidth technologies. Moreover, there is an opportunity to more greatly utilize the opportunities available from the existent technologies inherent in known on screen display controllers of terminals of such systems.